I blame the scapegoats (24 page)

British
Energy was privatized the year before Labour came to power, but although the
nuclear industry has been receiving massive subsidies for fifty years, it is
still not profitable. Last year BE lost £518 million and remains heavily in
debt. They tried to get a mortgage on Sellafield but the valuation had to be
halted when the surveyors kept banging their little hammers on the side of the
reactor. BE also own nuclear power stations overseas and are hoping to raise
money by selling those. Apparently there's a man from Iraq who's very
interested.

At last the nuclear lobby are no longer
getting everything their own way. They knew they were in trouble when Tony
Blair's ministerial Jaguar was replaced with a purple 2CV with a smiley sticker
saying 'Atomkraft? Nein Danke!' It all started to go wrong for them when John
Prescott was at Environment. They explained to him the complex nuclear physics
that made atomic power possible and he just said, 'Right, but what if the pilot
light blows out?'

Despite support from the Conservative Energy
spokesman, British Energy have failed in their campaign for exemption from the
£80 million climate-change levy. For some reason the government does not see nuclear
power as especially environmentally friendly. Nuclear power
can
effect climate change; for example, it got much, much
hotter around Chernobyl a while back. The chairman of British Energy, Robin
Jeffrey, Britain's very own Mr Burns from
The
Simpsons,
audaciously claims that nuclear is the
greenest form of power because it doesn't emit any greenhouse gases. 'Doh!' as
Homer would say. Yes, apart from the deadly toxic waste that remains radioactive
for thousands of years, it really is a very green form of energy; apart from
endlessly producing one of the most lethal substances known to man that has to
be dumped underground to leak into the water supply and poison future
generations, it's as green as an organic mung bean farm. But these bearded
sandal-wearers always accentuate the negative when it comes to nuclear power,
don't they? The environmentalists never talk about all those years when
Chernobyl was supplying clean renewable energy as bunnies nibbled daisies in
the surrounding fields. No, they always have to focus on that one particular
day when Chernobyl exploded and contaminated hundreds of square miles with
highly toxic radioactive fall-out.

Amazingly,
British Nuclear Fuels Ltd have been lobbying to be allowed to construct a new
generation of nuclear facilities. They might as well build power stations that
burn £20 notes. But in the mind of the British public, the biggest worry will
always be safety - no matter how many times we simple folk are told that
British nuclear reactors are completely safe, that there is absolutely no
possibility of an accident here. So what do we know? Maybe we should take their
word for it that more nuclear power stations across Britain would be a good
idea. Because it's not just the safety experts from the nuclear lobby who say
this. The pilots at the Al-Qaida Flight School think so too.

14
September 2002

American
officials are currently lobbying hard at the UN. It's the name they don't like:
'United Nations' - there's something not quite right about it.

'We're
prepared to compromise,' they say. 'You can keep the first word.' 'United?'

'Yeah, but that second bit sounds wrong -
what other words are there?'

'United
Countries?' 'No . . .'

'United
Places . . .'

'No,
no, there must be another word for nation or country . . .' 'State?'

'Hmmm . . . United States, yes, that has a
ring to it. So we'll call it the "United States", with its HQ.in the
United States . . . Now this UN flag. We're prepared to compromise: you can
keep some of the blue, but it needs a bit of red and white in there as well.'

George W. Bush is trying to hijack the UN.
Delegates thought it was just a routine peace-time trip; they were settling
back in their seats for a snooze when suddenly a scary-looking American
President broke through the flimsy doors into the United Nations cockpit,
grabbed the controls and attempted to steer the UN into a catastrophe. Will anyone
have the courage to overpower him or will they nervously sit it out, hoping
that they might somehow survive?

Of course, he tried to appear conciliatory
and courteous. But Bush's speech to the UN this week was like a headteacher
pretending to respect the newly formed school council. It's not that he was
patronizing to the UN, but at one point he stopped his monologue and shouted,
'Canada! Are you chewing? Get up here and spit it out!' His message was that
the only way to ensure that UN policy was implemented around the world was to
change it to American policy. Some of the more subversive translators were
having great fun. Bush said, 'Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its
founding or will it be irrelevant?' And into the headphones of one European minister
came the translation, 'Listen, suckers, I'm going to bomb who the bloody hell I
like, so sod the lot of you!'

'The world now faces a test and the UN a
defining moment,' continued Dubya, as African leaders heard him apparently
saying, 'I've never heard of half your countries! Why are you wearing those
funny costumes? I might bomb you next! I've got B52s and sidewinders and
everything, neeeeeoooow, boom! Bang! Ker-pow!'

Despite his efforts, Bush does not have the
backing of the international community and so makes the most of his support
from the British Foreign Secretary. Diplomatically he is a drowning man
clutching at Jack Straws. Admittedly the United Nations is not the speediest
means of deciding policy. At the beginning of the Afghan conflict a UN
committee sat down to hammer out a resolution and this week they nearly agreed
on whether it was 'Taliban' with an 'i' or 'Taleban' with an 'e'. But changing
the world takes time. It is a laborious and painstaking process.

In North London an extended campaign by local
residents recently managed to prevent a branch of Starbucks opening in their
area. In my road another Starbucks has just opened and someone keeps smashing
the windows. (It's amazing what you can get the Cubs to do in Bob-a-Job week.)
Bombing Baghdad is the diplomatic equivalent of protestors who smash windows.
It makes them feel tough and hard, it's quick and easy, but it doesn't actually
make anything better for the people who really need help. It's instant espresso
politics to go.

Meaningful
change is brought about by long-term strategies, patience, painstaking
persuasion and taking people with you. In this crisis we have to ensure that
the United Nations is the ultimate authority; the UN has to agree a meaningful
line and then eventually we might find a way to rid the world of the new
Starbucks in my road.

Saddam might seem a little harder to shift,
but quick wars don't bring long-term peace. American foreign policy is like
their television. It has to keep jumping from one thing to another because the
President has the remote control in his hand and his attention span is very
limited. That thrilling adventure
Take Out the Taliban!
held his interest for a short while, but now the
explosive opening action sequence is over and it's got bogged down in the
complex story of rebuilding a war-torn country. Bush's finger is hovering over
that button, itching to see if there's any more exciting stuff somewhere else.

'Don't
you want to stick with this and see how Afghanistan turns out?' says Colin
Powell. 'Nah, it's got boring now.'

'But we don't even
know if they catch Bin Laden . . .'

'Ooh wow, look what's on CNN!
Bombers
Over Baghdad!
Let's see if this baddie Saddam gets it
instead . . .'

War
on Iraq will not make the world a safer place. Perhaps the only way to make US
policy successful is radically to change the aims. Then, as the troops are
brought home and the flags are waved, the White House could declare that they'd
definitely achieved all the objectives in 'Operation Kill All the Wrong People
and Make the Problem Much Worse'.

12
October 2002

At
school I was taught that the purpose of an opposition is to oppose, propose and
depose. Frankly 'decompose' looks more likely at the moment. In fact, if you
watched footage of this week's Conservative Party conference, a number of Tory
members were forced to take their seats in the audience despite having died
several weeks earlier.
Newsnight
interviewers
did their best to get delegates' reactions to the various speeches, despite
being unable to find any party members who were still actually alive.

'Were you concerned that Theresa May
described the Tories as the Nasty Party?'
(Delegate
stares open mouthed into the middle distance and then slumps forward on chair.)
'Urn, I see you're avoiding answering the question. Is
this a make-or-break conference for Iain Duncan Smith?'
(Interviewee's
head falls off and is hastily put hack on
by
Tory Party
activist.)

Coming back from the dead was the challenge
that faced the Tories this week and they told us loud and clear that they were
on the way back. Actually it wasn't loud and clear; it was quiet and unclear.
They were definitely looking to the future, but they'd be completing the
unfinished business of the Thatcher revolution. I'm delighted to hear that
they're going to carry on where Thatcher's ministers left off;

now
we can look forward to seeing this lot banged up in prison as well.

When
they took the register on Monday morning, there were a number of notable
absences. Thatcher? Not here. Major? He just pulled out, sir. Currie - she's
tucked up in bed as well, sir. Aitken? Absent. Hamilton? Absent. Archer - he
might turn up later, sir, he said he'd see if he could get away. The remaining
Tories unveiled twenty-five new policies or, put simply, one each. They tried
to make it sound exciting but, strangely, the voters seemed to be less
interested in opposition policy initiatives than they were in the sudden
revelations about Edwina Currie shagging John Major.

Conference began with some tough talking from
Theresa May, the new Tory Party 'chairman'. (The Tories couldn't possibly say
they had a new 'chair'; it might make people think they couldn't afford a set
of six.) She has obviously heard that it's a good idea to nick a few lines from
your political enemies and so they spent the whole week saying 'Don't Vote
Conservative! The Tories are dreadful!' Her job on Monday was to try to present
the human face of the Tory Party. So she thought, 'Hmm -I think I'll get them
to concentrate on the shoes.' Just in case the delegates did not believe that
they were the Nasty-Party, she then made way for a succession of unsavoury
characters whose policy ideas were a combination of the unworkable and the
dangerous. 'Localization' is just another word for privatization. The idea of
tax breaks for using private health would leave the NHS as a skeleton service,
pun intended. I'm not saying these ideas were written on the back of a fag
packet, but when one shadow minister read out his new policy he shouted, 'We
will let patients set up their own hospitals high tar, smoking causes heart
disease!'

The
conference ended not with a bang but with a whimper. Various newspapers
reproduced Iain Duncan Smith's speech yesterday, but to really convey the sense
of it they should have printed the text in an extremely small font. IDS needs
to spend a few weeks at BBC1's
Fame Academy
learning
how to project his voice and stop making strange hand gestures. But if I was
IDS, I would whisper my achievements. If I was leading my party into third
place, I wouldn't feel like shouting. If my policies were reducing the housing
available to low earners or creating a two-tier health service or leaving the
work of social services to charities, I'd mumble them as quietly as I could.
This week we were presented with the new image of the leader of the opposition
- Iain Duncan Smith is the Quiet Man. But then he has a great deal to be quiet
about.

19
October 2002

For
years now the left has been campaigning for a more humane penal system,
protesting that British prisoners are forced to subsist in degrading and
barbaric conditions, in desperate need of a more liberal and enlightened
approach. And then they go and transfer Jeffrey Archer to an open prison. I
mean these criminals, they might as well be at a bloody holiday camp. What sort
of deterrent is that, playing table tennis and gardening and watching telly all
day in their luxury penthouse suites while us law-abiding tax payers have to
foot the bill? I reckon they should bring back the stocks and the birch, except
those Tory public-school types would probably bloody enjoy it!